Stage 2: New Media and Journalism

Group 1

“Trending”

We have discovered that we have simply not had enough time to realistically follow any trends in the emerging new media spaces.

Although in a historical sense these changes are occurring incredibly fast, they are still unobservable over such a short time span.

What we have identified

In print journalism: the emergence of new ways to check data has lead to the old “he said she said” model of journalism style falling out of vogue.

Most of the “journalism” by these new sources is simply analysis and commentary on news which was reported by mainstream journalists.

What we have identified

In broadcast journalism technologies like youtube and CNN’s iReport have lead to increasing amounts of citizen journalism.

Mass media moving into online spaces have failed to effectively monetize on new medias.

Concerns

One of the major concerns with the emergence of the citizen journalist is a lack of credibility.

Another major problem with the idea of citizen journalism is the lack of the average citizen’s ability to cover topics which require a large investment of time and energy.

Positives

There are some good things about the emergence of mass reporting however: The multitude of eyes on any one news source

and the easy ability to do fact finding online has added another check on journalistic accuracy.

Those without a voice in the traditional mass media now have a way to share their views.

Research Tools

In order to collaborate effectively despite our distance from one another in both a physical and temporal sense, we have used several new technologies including: The Class wiki: we found that the class wiki was an

effective way to share information gathered from multiple sources.

Twitter: we found twitter helped to lead us to issues being talked about, however it proved ineffective in observing these trends over time.

Diigo: we did not find diigo effectual for sharing information, mainly because we had already been using the class wiki to share data.

Sources of Interest

Sean Donahue: he is known as the manic marketer and has been proven to be a very successful entrepreneur, especially in the social media and technology fields.

Along with his own business website, which is targeted at online bloggers, online business owners and ecommerce, he provides a very informational blog containing useful information on the latest trends, strategies and success tips for marketers and other online businessmen.

Donahue’s main objective is to share useful knowledge and provide advice and other useful business information in order for all types of people to make money using the Internet.

Sources of Interest

Peter Cashmore is the CEO of Mashable, a site that aggregates news both from and about new media sources.

He continuously updates his twitter and effectively uses it to draw traffic to Mashable.

His site is especially useful for seeing what is being written about new media.

Sources of Interest

Jay Rosen: a professor at NYU, Rosen writes in depth and in an educated way about the changes occurring in journalism on www.pressthink.com.

Although he has a wealth of data stored on his site, he did not update his blog during the class, so he was of little use for tracking the trend.

Conclusions

Journalism is undoubtedly going through a cataclysmic transition from an “all-pro” system which favors the deep pockets of the mass media to a “pro-am” system; in which there is an uneasy peace of sorts between those who are paid and those who are not.

The much ballyhooed “downfall of the newspapers” is perhaps a bit overblown. While the new mediascape has certainly reduced the numbers and scope of newspapers, they continue to exist as an important source of news.

As with any trend, there are early adopters and there are laggards, however adopting the techs early has not necessarily lead to increased profits, however it has lead to a favorable market position.